Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt: Shir Hama’alot

Chazzanut/Cantorial Music

Shir Hama’alot by Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt

Via: Youtube

From Psalm 126 in the Hebrew Bible, Shir Hama’alot (שיר המעלות; Hebrew for “Songs of Ascent”), is essentially a song of gratitude to God for being freed from captivity, for fulfilling a dream of returning to Zion. The melody was composed by Cantor Pinchas Minkowski​ [1859–1924] and made popular by Cantor Rosenblatt [1882–1933].

I found it noteworthy and interesting that religious Zionists lobbied for Shir Hama’alot to be Israel’s national anthem, writes Neil W. Levin for the Milken Archive of Jewish Music:

Some religious Zionist groups, already disaffected by the secular nature of the Zionist movement, lobbied for a biblical text. They usually proposed Psalm 126, shir hama’alot b’shuv adonai et shivat tziyon (A song of ascents: When God brought back those who returned to Zion ...), which refers to the restoration following the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian captivity. For religious Zionists, that would at least have provided the desired acknowledgment of a Divine parameter to the modern Zionist enterprise.

But Hatikvah was chosen (Herzl disliked it, but he died in 1904), chiefly because the early pioneers liked it (officially adopted by the members at the 18th Zionist Congress in 1933; it only officially became Israel's national anthem in 2004). Not in serious contention was the biblical Psalm 126 and its references to a return to Zion from Babylonian exile (“When the LORD brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream” (verse 1), since this is what it seems what the Founding Fathers of Israel (and not of Zion) wanted, that is, for the new nation to be unlike the old nation.

This might explain the reluctance of the secular leaders to use a biblical Psalm, avoiding its use would allow the new nation to separate it from its past and make a new history that starts only with the history of Zionism, which dates only to the late nineteenth century. Some view this as a tragic mistake, and it may well be. Not to return to old arguments, but it does seem that this verse suggests that the national dream of the Jews cannot be separated from the ideas of national redemption through the work of God.

Supporting this view, Rav Kook writes: “The Zionist movement could not have convinced millions of Jews to uproot themselves if not for the people’s deep-rooted longings for the Land of Israel. It is our faith and anticipation of redemption that enables the realization of Israel’s national segulah.” [Hebrew for treasure; segulah here is understood as a spiritual quality; Israel has a unique potential for greatness.]

Great Advances in Science John Hopps is seen testing the world’s first pacemaker in this 1946 photo. Photo Credit : National Rese...

Yiddish Sites

There are dozens of sites dedicated to Yiddish language, culture and music. Here are some that I have found noteworthy. I will add to the list regularly. If you have a Yiddish site or know of one, please do not hesitate to contact me at pjgreenbaum@gmail.com:

*********************************

Afn Shvel (“On the Threshold”), a magazine published by the League for Yiddish, dating to 1941, it is committed to the promotion and preservation of the Yiddish language and culture. It published two double issues a year. Its editor-in-chief is Sheva Zucker;

American Jewish Archive at Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion contains more than 10 million pages of documents. manuscripts, genealogical materials, as well as thousands of audiovisual recordings, photographs, microfilm and digital collections;Committee For Yiddish, in Toronto, in partnership with UJA Federation, fosters and promotes Yiddish language and culture—indeed the entire Ashkenaz tradition—as a vibrant part of contemporary Jewish life and as a vital link between the Jewish past and future

Center for Jewish History, in New York City, has 5 miles of archival material (in dozens of languages), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings and photographs;

Forverts (“Forward”), one of the first mass Yiddish newspapers in America, founded in New York City in 1897;Jewish Folk Songs, by Batya Fonda, is a series of lectures given in either English or Hebrew about the ways folk songs reflect different themes of Jewish heritage;

Golden Age of Yiddish Radio, the 1930s to the 1950s, is brought to you by the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Miami, Florida.

JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, a database of more than 1,000 yizkor books worldwide, a good number of them have been translated from Hebrew and Yiddish into English;

Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jews, from Columbia University, consists of 5,755 hours of audio tape interviews with Yiddish-speaking Jews from Central and eastern Europe, done between 1959 and 1972 along with around 100,000 pages of linguistic field notes;

Lexilogos, a compilation of Yiddish online resources, including dictionaries, grammar books, and a translation of the Torah (Toyre) in Yiddish;

Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a record of the American Jewish Experience; since 1990, it has become the largest collection of American Jewish music with about 600 recorded works, including a number in Yiddish;

Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, an online museum originating in New York City and founded by Dr. Steven Lasky, has in its collection such items as photographs, theatre programs, sheet music, audio recordings and other documents of some importance and historical significance;

Pakn Treger, (“itinerant bookseller in Eastern Europe who traveled from shtetl to shtetl ”), the magazine of the Yiddish Book Centre;

Recorded Sound Archives (RSA) of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton contains more than 100,000 recordings of music, a great many in Yiddish;

Songs of My People, a site by Josephine Yalovitser dedicated to Yiddish songs of mourning and of joy;

The National Center For Jewish Film, based at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is the home to 15,000 reels of feature films, documentaries, newsreels, home movies and institutional films, dating from 1903 to the present; this effort has led to the revival of Yiddish cinema;

Yizkor Book Collection at the New York Public Library provide a documentation of daily life, through essays and photographs and the memoralizing of murdered residents, of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Of the 750 yizkor books in its collection, 618 have been digitalized. Most yizkor books are in Yiddish or Hebrew;

Yungtruf (“call to youth”), the site says, “cultivates the active use of the Yiddish language among today’s youth here and abroad by creating opportunities for Yiddish learning and immersion, and by providing resources and support for Yiddish speakers and families within an expansive social network”;